Monthly Archives: August 2008

This has nothing to do with SharePoint. 🙂 I found this article rather interesting… it is about designers getting back to doing things with their hands in this uber electronic, hands on activity depraved world.

It struck particularly close to home with me, as I have picked up a new creative hobby and totally banned using computers in any way. Good stuff for the right side of your brain. The object of the article are designers from Adobe, which I also found interesting and inspiring. Maybe what SharePoint needs is a heavy dose of wood shop class!

User Interface Engineering has posted an article about breadcrumbs, and why they feel that breadcrumbs are a design cop-out. It is a good read, especially for people using SharePoint for external facing sites.

Personally, I only utilize page breadcrumbs when working with administering lists and settings. The breadcrumb provides a quick way back to list screens and other setting screens where otherwise no navigation is provided. For that purpose I think they can be useful. The article brings up some valid points on whether or not to use breadcrumbs at all.

A common request is to alter the default look of the search input and button area to something that better matches a design or fits better in space that is available. When working with the default search, you are limited to the CSS classes provided to you and the layout that ships with SharePoint. It is possible to create your own search display by deploying a Feature. Note I am not referring to search results, just the search box area available on most SharePoint pages, generally located in the header section. Continue reading SharePoint 2007 Design Tip: Create a custom search input interface→